It’s not long now till dashing academic Prof Matt and I give our talk at the 4th International Comics and Medicine Conference, to be held this July in Brighton.

I'm really looking forward to this conference! With talks from ‘medicine people’ and ‘comics people’, both exploring how the medium of comics can actively benefit medical understanding, it seems to me a very exciting forefront of exploration.

Matt and I are still working out the finer points of our presentation (namely who will play Paul Daniels and who will play Debbie McGee)... however it’s not all me, Matt, saws and sequins. Another aspect to the conference is the comics-art print exhibition, curated by physician and art critic Dr John Quin and made up of pieces by the actual comics people attending.

The exhibition will reflect the themes of the conference, and being able to associate the pieces to the real-life people giving the talks will only add to the interest and understanding.

Of course I’m one of those naughty imposters in the comics world who writes but doesn’t draw, so I don’t have artwork of my own to exhibit. I do, however, have artwork that was my poet-brother Rob’s. And as we’ll be talking about the Rob-inspired project HOAX, which sits very firmly within Graphic Medicine, it seems only fitting.

Rob was as mighty with the pencil as he was the pen. The print I’ve chose for the exhibition was part of his own exploration into the dark layers we can so easily succumb to….

The end of the conference will see the prints auctioned, with all profits raised going to charity.